Unit 1: Thinking Like a Psychologist

Module 1: How Psychologists Think

1.1 Understanding the Science of Psychology

1.2 Thinking Like a Psychologist About Psychological Information

1.3 Watching Out for Errors in Reasoning

Module 2: How Psychologists Know What They Know

2.1 The Process of Psychological Research

2.2 Research Methods Used to Describe People and Determine Relationships

2.3 Research Methods Used to Determine Cause and Effect

2.4 Statistical Procedures to Make Research Data More Meaningful

2.5 Ethics in Research

Module 3: How Psychologists Think About the Field of Psychology

3.1 Psychology’s Subfields and Perspectives

3.2 Career Options for Psychology Majors                                            

Module 4: The Science of Psychology: Tension And Conflict In A Dynamic Discipline

I wish I could:

• Go back in time and remember what it was like to be a baby.
• See inside people’s memory.
• Read people’s minds.
• See what other people see.

—Doug, age 6

To that, we can only add, us too. That is why we decided to study psychology.

Do you ever wonder:

• Why you can remember some important information but forget other equally important information?
• Why some people seem to love school and work, while others hate it?
• How the brain works?
• Whether parents really understand the unintelligible sounds that come out of their two year old’s mouth?
• Whether you will be the same person 15, 25, or 50 years from now? And if you will be different, how you will be different?
• Why some people have satisfying relationships and others seem to jump from one bad relationship to the next?
• Why some people hate?
• Why people fall in love?
• Whether and how advertising really works?
• Whether you get enough sleep, and what happens if you do not?
• What, exactly, depression, anxiety disorders, and other psychological disorders are and why some people develop them but others do not?

Us too. That is why we decided to study psychology.

Psychology is defined as the science of behavior and mental processes. This is a broad definition because, as you will see in this course, psychology is a very broad discipline. The two main parts of the definition are (1) the subject matter, namely behavior and mental processes, and (2) the methods used to study them, which are the methods of science. This first unit of the book deals with the role of science in psychology, so we will have a chance to tell you about that very soon.

First, however, a brief description of the other part of the definition, behavior and mental processes, is in order. A behavior is any observable response in an organism, usually a person (although some psychologists study other animals). If you see two people walking down the hall together holding hands, you are observing behavior (several behaviors, actually). Likewise, a person insulting or injuring a rival is a behavior. So is answering a survey question, running to get out of the rain, eating, crying, sleeping, and so on. In short, anything a person does is a behavior and is a legitimate part of the subject matter of psychology. Behavior does not always require observation with the naked eye, by the way. As long as the response can be reliably measured, it counts as a behavior. For example, when you are nervous, your palms sweat. The sweat increases the electrical conductivity of your hand; it is called galvanic skin response, and it can be measured. Electrical activity in the brain, too, can be measured, so it counts as a behavior.

In the first part of the 20th century in the United States, psychology was almost purely the science of behavior. Modern psychologists try not to just measure behavior but also to figure out which mental processes, or functions within the brain, are responsible for producing the observed behavior. To give you a simple example, suppose you observe two people walking down the hall holding hands. As a casual observer, you might guess, or infer, from this behavior that they like each other. Liking cannot be observed directly but is taken to be a mental process associated with the observed behavior, holding hands. Although the concepts that psychologists use are a bit more complex, and the observations they make more careful and planned, their inferences of mental processes are basically the same thing that we do in our everyday lives.

Psychology is the subject the authors of this textbook chose to devote our professional lives to decades ago. We chose it, in part, because the topics we were studying in our undergraduate psychology courses were so personally meaningful. Quite simply, we began to notice, and even use, the material from psychology courses in our everyday lives. That, in a nutshell, is our most important goal for this book, to highlight the relevance of psychology in your lives. This book, then, is organized around themes that we hope you will find personally meaningful. We will introduce you to the fascinating and complex world of psychology by dividing the topics that psychologists study into six themes relevant to everyday life, each one a unit of the textbook:

• Unit One. Thinking Like a Psychologist
• Unit Two. Understanding and Using Principles of Memory, Thinking, and Learning
• Unit Three. Understanding Human Nature
• Unit Four. Developing Throughout the Lifespan
• Unit Five. Getting Along in the Social World
• Unit Six. Achieving Physical and Mental Well-Being

At the same time, these six units reflect the way psychologists organize, or sub-divide the field. We encourage you to pay attention to this organization because it will help you make sense out of the book, the class, and the field of psychology as a whole. Let us use our favorite metaphor to help you keep this organization in mind. Throughout this book, we will be building a “house of psychology.” We will build it a bit out of order, so focus on the structure of the house, not so much the process of building it. Our eventual house of psychology will have the following parts:

• Foundation: Science, research methods, biopsychology.
• First Floor: Sensation and perception, processes for getting the outside world represented inside our heads.
• Stairs Between First and Second Floors: memory, categorization, emotion, motivation, learning (basic units of thoughts and feelings)
• Second Floor: Subfields of cognitive, developmental, social, and personality psychology.
• Third Floor and Roof: The helping side of psychology, such as clinical and counseling psychology.

As we are sure you know, a solid house must rest on a strong foundation, so we will begin with it. The foundation for our house of psychology is composed of scientific thinking and research methods, as described throughout Unit 1, Thinking Like a Psychologist. And we will return to our house metaphor periodically throughout the book.

So, the first unit of this book is “Thinking Like a Psychologist.” Why is that the first theme addressed in this book? Do psychologists really think better than other people? Perhaps. We certainly believe that psychologists have something to say about how we can better understand ourselves and others. In addition, psychology is deeply committed to scientific reasoning and critical thinking. Both of these skills will help you to evaluate research, arguments, and other claims you will encounter, in psychology and other disciplines. In short, if you begin to think like a psychologist, you will almost certainly become a more astute observer of the people and the world around you.

The unit is divided into four Modules (think of a Module as a short chapter):

Module 1, How Psychologists Think, introduces you to the role of science in psychology and describes how you should think about the psychological information you encounter in this course and elsewhere.

Module 2, How Psychologists Know What They Know, provides many details about the methods that psychologists use to learn about human behavior and mental processes. In short, it is about research design.

Module 3, How Psychologists Think About the Field of Psychology, describes how the discipline of psychology is subdivided and gives you information about career options for psychology majors.

At the end of the unit, and at the end of every unit in the book, is a special module that will look a little different from the earlier ones.  The purpose of these modules is to bring together the previous material and provide additional historical and psychological context for the material you have read. These sections often contain descriptions of research related to the material in the other modules. They provide a final link between the “personally meaningful” material emphasized in the modules and the traditional organization of the field by psychologists (and will often reference our metaphorical house of psychology).

Module 4,  The Science of Psychology: Tension and Conflict in a Dynamic Discipline.” In addition to giving you a description of the role that conflict played in the development of scientific psychology, it offers another reason for you to think critically about the psychological information you encounter.